Caline P5 Power Supply Review

[rickenbackerkid]

Simple and short version - they claim this has isolated outputs, high mA delivery, 240 or 110 volt operation, 9, 12 and 18 volt outputs.

They are not lying. It does exactly what it says on the tin and costs just $45 USD / $67 NZD from AliExpress.

While my testing is not OTT, I can confirm the outputs are isolated, the 9, 12 and 18volts are spot on, and the mA outputs have AT LEAST 160 mA on tap. I don't have any pedals that need more mA to test with. It works perfectly on 110 volt too.

To sum up - does what they say it does, cheap, build quality is good, excellent buy for the price.

I'm powering 2x Boss pedals, a Radial DI/preamp and a Sennhieser wireless system.

[robthemac]

Is it any more or less noisy than batteries or other power supplies?

[rickenbackerkid]

No noticeable extra noise when compared to using my Radial power supply and the boss stuff on batteries

[Miza]

Good on you Ben. Always nice when people take the time to do a decent review.

I've got the same Radial PZ Pre but I always thought it was bad to run it on anything but 15v, which is a mongrel to find in a PS. I bought a CIOKS DC10 cos it was the only one on the market offering 15v.

But I'm keen to make a separate board for my acoustic at some stage, so this might be a contender.

[rickenbackerkid]

Radial told me via email that you can run it safely at 18 volts, although it will lower it's useful life from something like 30 years to just 20! It has an internal power filter and stabilizing circuit, so it's probably quite flexible in terms of what voltage you feed it.

It would also theoretically be possible to build a cable that automatically drops a DC 18 volt output to 15 volts by installing a Zener diode in one of the plugs. Zener diodes have the useful property of dropping a DC voltage by 3 volts, and they are pretty small as well.

<edit> should have been a bit clearer and said certain zener diodes can drop 3 volts when used a certain specific way!

[Mattallica]

I think the MXR iso brick was released recently and that has variable outputs 6-15V if someone wanted another 15V option

[jeremyb]

Got one of these on order, thanks for the review Ben!! Hopefully it arrives, paid extra for DHL shipping from AliExpress thinking it might have a higher chance of making it

[Molly]

Got one of these on order, thanks for the review Ben!! Hopefully it arrives, paid extra for DHL shipping from AliExpress thinking it might have a higher chance of making it

Maybe I should've done that. Rookie mistake.

[jeremyb]

Forgot to mention, this arrived last week, works a treat, pedalboard will be in the mail shortly, looking forward to getting all my pedals up off the floor!